Hot type gave way to photocomposition in 1971, where stories where written on centralized mainframe computers and output to paper film in galley form.

Once the film was developed, X-Acto knives, hot wax and pica poles were the tools of the trade. Knife wounds, while not common, were sometimes an occupational hazard at the Daily Camera in the chaos of deadlines.

"It got kind of dangerous," said Ronda Haskins, a longtime copy editor at the Camera.

Headlines and story pieces were waxed, then the staff in the composing room would lay the pieces on blank page templates marked with column grids, using black border tape to make photo boxes and lines.

"Paste-up was pretty fun, and I missed it for quite while after the industry moved on," said Kent Shorrock, who has worked at the Daily Camera since 1980 and now is a member of the page design team.

Ads were built separately and then were pasted into place on the page grids.

Shorrock said his first job at the Camera included keeping track of ads that were going to be picked up from one edition and used again.

"We would lift all of the pick-up ads from the page grids and then store them in large, dated manila envelopes," he said. "If an ad was needed again, we would just rummage through envelopes."

Since everything was held together by wax, it was an ongoing battle to not lose bits that might fall off.

"More than one piece of important type was recovered from the underside of someone's shoes," Shorrock said.

Completed pages were photographed, then developed as full-page sized negatives. Photographs required a separate negative creation process. The page and photo negatives then were married together and those negatives used to burn the image of the page on to aluminum plates for the press. After a short proof run, the press would stop to allow editors and reporters to check the paper for mistakes. With 40-minute processing times, completely re-doing a page or pushing a deadline often couldn't happen.

Compositors set lines of type generated by the Linotype into pages for the press. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

In the late 1980s, the Camera left paste-up behind and went to building pages on computers electronically. That eventually allowed pages, including photos, to be sent directly to full-page negatives. By the late 1990s, the process evolved further and designed pages were sent directly to the aluminum press plates.

The first pagination systems were so slow and clunky, Shorrock said, that paste-up might have been faster.

But as systems have improved, he said, "We have gained a lot of speed and flexibility in design.

"And no one has accidentally stabbed me with an X-Acto knife in years," he added.

Haskins said going digital streamlined the production process and made it easier to get breaking news into the paper.

But, she said, there were advantages to a more hands-on system.

"If the Internet (connection) goes down, we can't build pages because the pagination program is web-based," she said. "We can't send pages to the printing plants, because the delivery system is web-based. If the power goes out, we can't do anything. In the old days, you could still write stories on a manual typewriter with the light of a bicycle lamp or flashlight."

In 2007, the Camera shifted its primary printing operations to the Denver Newspaper Agency, shutting down both its main press at its Pearl Street Mall building and dismantling a smaller press off 57th Court in Boulder.

A staffer examines a negative being readied for print. (Camera file)

Shorrock remembers that the whole Pearl Street building would shake when the press was running, making it a visceral part of what it meant to work at a newspaper.

"When on occasion you actually got to say 'Stop the press' to update an important story or to fix error it felt almost like being in a movie," he said.

In 2010, the Camera's buildings sold to Los Angeles-based Karlin Real Estate for $9 million. Without the need for space for a printing press, the Camera moved to smaller office buildings in Boulder, first 5450 Western Ave. and now 2500 55th St.

The design team is about the same size as in past years, but now is centralized in the Camera's newsroom.

Digital page design allows the design team to layout the pages for 11 different newspapers, both local papers and those located around the state — including the Lamar Ledger that's about 230 miles away.

The earliest editions of the Daily Camera were produced one letter at a time using moveable type. It was a labor intensive, tedious process., as compositors set the individual letters into words, then sentences and ultimately full pages.

A technical revolution occurred at the Camera in 1902, when it acquired its first Linotype machine and started using hot type, or molten lead cast into letters.

Operators of the massive Linotype would type stories into the machine a line at a time. Molds of those letters and punctuation marks were then filled with molten lead, which formed lines of type that were used to build pages for the press.

Early photographs had to be etched onto pieces of metal that were mounted onto wooden blocks and assembled along with type to create pages for the press. (Camera file)